We are a team of experienced and knowledgeable Chromebook experts that test every model that comes out. We are also parents, so we know what students need in a laptop.

The Lenovo Chromebook 500e is a great educational device. It’s cheap and offers robust software experiences and access to school services. It’s easy to manage and use, versatile and attractive and comes with a stylus for taking notes. It’s the best of all worlds for a student.

The Lenovo Chromebook 500e is built like a tank with a reinforced shell and rubber bumpers that make it MIL-STD 810G compliant so it’s going to survive banging around in a backpack. The Chromebook 500e is designed for educational use but still has the options we want to see in our best pick. It’s exactly what a busy student needs.

Why you should buy this Chromebook

The Chromebook 500e was built for students to carry back and forth to class without worry because of its rugged build. Features like a 360-degree hinge and excellent pen support make it the best Chromebook for any student. Lenovo’s long history of making excellent laptops shines through with the keyboard and trackpad and the display is specially bonded to work excellent with the built-in Wacom EMR pen.

Inside, you have plenty of power to get things done with an Intel processor and ample 64GB or storage. And Android app support is an added bonus that means a student will be able to find the app they need to be productive in class.

Reasons to buy

Fantastic build quality
360-degree hinge
Included pen
Great battery life
Powerful processor
Lots of storage
Reasons not to buy

Trackpad isn’t great
A bit heavy
There are plenty of great alternatives for students

The Lenovo Chromebook 500e is an amazing Chromebook, but there are plenty of other options, especially if you’re looking for something a bit smaller or thinner.

The Chromebook Tab is light and easy to hold, is great for more interaction with learning materials, and helps young students learn spelling and grammar by being more hands-on. While many Chromebooks can fold into a tablet, the Chromebook Tab 10 is a tablet.

Not quite a Chromebook, not quite an Android tablet, the Chromebook Tab is great for youngsters who need to learn by touching and doing.

Acer’s new Chromebook 11 is an affordable and dependable Chromebook that has no aspirations to be anything else. The beautiful blue body doesn’t flip over into a tablet, there is no touch display or pen input — it’s a Chromebook.

The Acer Chromebook 11 is a throwback to the days when a Chromebook was just a great, inexpensive laptop. That makes it simple to use and easy on your wallet.

Bottom line

Students have some incredible options these days when shopping for a Chromebook. They can go the traditional route by getting something like the Acer Chromebook 11, or go in the complete opposite direction and buy a Chrome tablet that is super portable.

Google Home has long allowed users to set which news sources they hear when they ask Assistant to “play the news,” but with the arrival of Smart Displays from Lenovo and others, many of these briefings now have video, too.

That means when you ask your Lenovo Smart Display to “play the news,” you can watch it, too! Here’s how to get it set up.

How to add video sources to your news briefing

All of the work is done inside the Google Home app, because the Lenovo Smart Display is basically a Google Home with a screen. That means that changes made to the news briefing order will affect all other Google Home speakers associated with your account. Keep that in mind if, for example, you’d prefer to watch your news on one screen and listen to it with a different speaker.

Open the Google Home app.
From the home screen, tap on the three-line hamburger menu.

Select More settings.

Scroll down to News and tap on it.
Select Add news sources.
Check off news sources that say “Video available on Smart Displays”.
Optional Return to previous screen and select Change Order.

Optional Move video briefings up to the top of the list.

What video sources are there?

Right now, it’s early days in the life of video news sources inside of Google Assistant, so the selections are slim.

The great thing about this new feature is that even if you don’t want to mess with your existing news briefing list — say you have a Google Home or other Assistant-based speaker — you can always just ask the Lenovo Smart Display to “play Reuters TV” or “show me CNBC,” making it super easy to catch up on the news really quickly.

The Moto Face Unlock app has surfaced on the Google Play Store.
The app should offer an easy way for Lenovo to keep facial recognition functionality updated and bug-free.
Don’t expect the same level of sophistication as face unlock efforts from Apple and Samsung.

The app appears to use only the single front camera for authentication, so don’t expect anything as advanced as Apple’s Face ID or even Samsung’s Intelligent Scan technology. Nevertheless, you’ll need to visit your device’ security settings menu to give the feature a try, Lenovo says on the Play Store listing.

In theory, the Moto Face Unlock app means Lenovo can update the function’s speed and reliability without actually pushing out a full-fledged system update. In fact, the app listing notes “performance improvements and minor bug fixes” in this version of the app already.

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As for compatibility, PhoneArena reports that the app is available on the Moto G6, Moto G6 Play, Moto G6 Plus, Moto Z3, Moto Z3 Play, and Moto X4. So if you’ve got a Moto E-series device or an older Moto Z phone, it seems like you’re out of luck for now.

Want to get your hands on the Moto Face Unlock app? You can grab it via the button below!

Ever since Google first announced its Smart Display platform back at CES in January, I’ve been more than eager to get my hands on one to experience the future of living with the Google Assistant in my home. I use my Google Home and Home Mini every day for a variety of things, and as much as I love them, the idea of essentially having one with a screen slapped on top sounds like a dream come true.

There are a few Smart Displays that have been announced, but so far, the one that’s peeked my interest the most is Lenovo’s.

The Lenovo Smart Display is the very first one to hit the market, and even though it’s a bit more expensive and has a few kinks to work out compared to the tried and true Google Home, there are a few reasons why I’d like to have it over Google’s iconic speaker.

Video support

The screen on the Lenovo Smart Display is obviously the biggest draw to it over the Google Home, and one of the reasons I’m most excited for this new addition is that it means I’ll have a new screen for watching videos on.

Like most people, I spend a lot of my time in the kitchen. Whether I’m cooking dinner, unloading the dishwasher, or scrubbing down the counters, there’s a lot of time spent in that room of my apartment. I typically play a YouTube video on my phone for some background noise while going about these tasks, and while that’s fine, it means having to move my phone around the kitchen with me so I can hear it and glance at what’s on its screen.

With the Lenovo Smart Display, I’ll be able to just ask the Google Assistant to play a YouTube video and have it showcased on a large 10.1-inch display with speakers that are far better than what’s on my OnePlus 6.

I don’t think I’ll be sitting down around a Smart Display anytime soon to watch full-length movies, but for those times when I want something to glance at every now and then while doing chores or preparing dinner for the night, I’m ecstatic to have something that’s been designed with that sort of use in mind.

Deeper control of apps/services

Video support is one feature the Lenovo Smart Displays offer that’s completely nonexistent on the Google Home, but along with charting unexplored frontiers, the use of a screen on Lenovo’s machine also allows for richer experiences that are already available with audio-only Assistant speakers.

For example, I can talk to my Google Home and ask it to dim my Hue Lights or change the temperature with a Nest thermostat all day long. The same exact thing can be done with the Lenovo Smart Display, but after that first command is given, you’ve got access to on-screen controls to fine-tune your lights or AC even more.

The Lenovo Smart Display is taking existing Google Home features and making them ten-times better.

Another way this can come in handy is with music. With the Lenovo Smart Display, you can actually browse through various playlists and decide which one you’d like without having to pick something specifically with just your voice. Once a song is playing, you can quickly glance at the screen to see what it’s called, fast forward, or see how much time is left with that particular track.

The Google Home can read aloud recipes, but with the Lenovo Smart Display, you get visual step-by-step directions and pictures of the dish you’re making to make the experience even more helpful. You can set timers on Google Home without any trouble, but on the Lenovo Smart Display, watch the seconds tick by without having to constantly ask “Hey, Google, how much time if left on my timer.”

You get my point.

A lot of what the Lenovo Smart Display does you can already do on Google Home, but because of the screen, the way you interact with these commands/questions is much more useful and seamless compared to an audio-only experience.

It’s a digital photo frame for the modern era

Along with all of the smart home control, powerful speakers, and everything else the Lenovo Smart Display has to offer, it’s also the best digital picture frame you can buy in 2018.

Digital picture frames have been around for years, but whether it was due to low-resolution screens, huge bezels, wonky controls, etc., the execution of them has always left something to be desired. The Lenovo Smart Display fixes all of that.

The HD or Full HD panels on the 8-inch and 10.1-inch models, respectively, look great, the bezels aren’t overly large, and best of all, your pictures are seamlessly added through your Google Photos account.

In addition to being able to pull up specific photos with just your voice, you can also set certain albums/pictures to regularly cycle through to ensure you’ve always got a memory to look at when walking by your Smart Display. And, since these are all pulled in from the cloud, you don’t have to mess with loading photos on an SD card.

The price is right

Last but certainly not least, the Lenovo Smart Display absolutely kills it when it comes to price.

For the 8-inch model, you’ll need to hand over just $199. On its own, that’s already a good price. When you compare it to the Google Home and realize it’s just $50 more than Google’s screenless-speaker and $30 less than the Echo Show, it becomes an even better deal.

The 10.1-inch screen is certainly nice to have, but for most people, the $199 model offers the same experience in a more compact form factor. And, for technically less than $200, I can see a lot of folks picking this up as a Christmas present come the holiday season this year.

Why do you want the Lenovo Smart Display?

Those are the reasons why I think the Lenovo Smart Display is a better purchase over the Google Home, but what about you? Are you excited for the Smart Display future or are you perfectly happy not having a screen for the Google Assistant? Let me know in the comments below!

One of the major drawbacks of Google’s incredibly powerful wireless company Project Fi is the very small list of compatible devices. What’s worse, of the devices that Project Fi does accept, there aren’t many cheap ones.

To be clear, this is an unlocked model and will work on any of the “Big Four” carriers in the United States (and a large selection of other carriers worldwide). But while you can find tons of budget devices to work on those carriers, you’re not going to find many phones to use on Project Fi for the $200 price that Newegg is asking.

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There are actually two versions of the Motorola Moto X4: a “vanilla” version and an Android One version. The Android One version is available direct from Project Fi if you’re interested in that, but the Newegg sale is for the vanilla version.

The Motorola Moto X4 ships with Android 7.1 Nougat, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a Snapdragon 630 processor, a 3.000mAh battery, and Bluetooth 5.0. There’s a 12MP camera on the rear and a 16MP, wide-angle selfie shooter on the front. The $200 price is only for the black color option.

You’ll need to use a discount code to get $100 off the asking price of $300. Use the code EMCPWSE22. Unfortunately, to get the deal you’ll have to opt-in to the Newegg mailing list. But don’t worry, you can just opt-out after your transaction is complete.

Click below to go to the Newegg listing. And remember to enter EMCPWSE22 at checkout!